ICYMI: DSCC Chair Sen. Gary Peters Discusses How Senate Democrats Will Win Again and The Stakes of The 2024 Election

Yesterday – approaching one year out from the 2024 election – Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chair Senator Gary Peters sat down with Major Garrett from CBS News to discuss Senate Democrats’ winning playbook and what’s at stake in the 2024 election.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

WATCH HERE: 

CBS News: DSCC Chair: Trump on the ballot a “huge motivator” for Democrats […]
“Abortion…a powerful issue.” 
November 1, 2023

Key points on… 

The Issues:

• Sen. Peters: “We know the issue of abortion, for example, continues to be a very strong issue. A powerful issue to motivate particularly voters who believe that women have a fundamental right to reproductive freedom. It’s going to be on the ballot again next year.”
  
  
• Sen. Peters: “We find abortion plays well in all states…in the last cycle, it was very strong. It brought out voters who traditionally may not vote on a regular basis and motivated folks, probably the main motivating group last cycle were young voters. In Michigan, for example, in my home state, we had a ballot initiative, Proposal 3 that had tried abortion rights in the state constitution. [We saw] huge turnout with young voters. In fact, we had the highest turnout of 18 to 29 year old voters anywhere in the country. And those are folks you don’t normally expect to see with those numbers in a midterm. And that’s a very important demographic.”
  

Strong Democratic Candidates:

• Sen. Peters: “Jon Tester in Montana has a track record of always outperforming the underlying democratic performance in the state of Montana, because he’s authentic and understands the issues and the concerns of people of Montana. Sherrod Brown has that same kind of authenticity that has allowed him to consistently do better than whatever the democratic baseline is…They understand their states …And we also believe a dynamic will be in play, like we saw in the last cycle, is that there’s a big contrast between the candidates between the Democratic candidate and the Republican candidate.”

Messy Republican Primaries:

• Major Garrett, CBS News: “And potentially nasty [Republican] primaries…certainly in Ohio…might be in Montana.” 

• Sen. Peters: “Montana, we believe that probably would be the case. But certainly in Ohio, we do know that that’s the case. And usually what happens in nasty primaries, at least what we saw before in these nasty Republican primaries, [is] often the most extreme candidate is the one that survives that primary. And the contrast between — in the case of these two states — incumbents that have proven that they fight for their state and deliver for their state versus a candidate who’s going to be flawed in many respects will mean that we’ll be victorious in the end.”

Problematic Senate Republican Candidates: 

• Sen. Peters: “What really helps us in Arizona is that we have Kari Lake as the likely Republican nominee. Her performance, not just in [the 2022] election but since that time as a major election denier and a very right wing person, out of step with the people of Arizona. She will do worse in the Senate race than she did in the Gubernatorial race…if you look at what the contrast is going to be with Kari Lake as the top of the Republican…candidate quality matters.”
  

Elections are Choices:

• Sen. Peters: “There’s [been] a lot of talk in recent years about how these races are nationalized and it’s pretty hard to beat that. We did that last cycle, and we were able to do that because of candidate quality and having a very clear distinction. When people go in to vote on Election Day, they’re not just voting for a generic Republican and a generic Democrat, they’re voting for an actual name and an actual person with the good and the bad.”

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